Among the many tech deals you can find at Amazon right now, Anker has an HDMI switch now going for dirt cheap. It’s normally selling for just $13—an already pretty inexpensive value—but right now you can get it for $3 off. That brings it to $10 even for a limited time.
Not every TV comes with enough HDMI ports to satisfy. On the higher end, you might find as many as five, but those can be filled up pretty quickly. You might have one dedicated to a soundbar, connected to your one HDMI ARC slot. Then the rest might end up getting plugged in with a cable box as well as something like a Fire TV Stick or Roku. And if you’re a gamer, you might then have several consoles you regularly use like a PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, or Nintendo Switch 2.
If you have a lower end TV, that might only come with just two HDMI ports, meaning you have to be real selective of what you have set up. It can be cumbersome to unplug and replug in from one console to another every time you swap between playing some God of War and Mario Kart World.
HDMI Switching Simplified
This is exactly where an HDMI switch like this one from Anker can come in handy. This unit allows you to plug in two different sources to the same HDMI input on your TV or monitor.
The Anker HDMI switch can support resolutions of up to 4K with refresh rates of up to 60Hz. You can use this switch with anything ranging from laptops to game consoles to VR headsets and more.
You can switch between your two inputs with a simple button press. The HDMI switch cannot autodetect signal from your sources like some TVs are able to do. The switch also does not support HDMI CEC. This is the tech that allows you to control some aspects of your TV from one of the sources or use you TV remote to control the source. An example of this is when you can use your TV remote to adjust the volume of your soundbar plugged into the HDMI ARC port.
It is recommended to use HDMI cables that are shorter than 3.3 feet and and do not exceed a length of 6.5 feet. The HDMI switch itself is compact, only weighing just over a single ounce and measures only 2.17 inches long and wide.